May 7, 2006, 19:55 GMT
Beijing - Pirated software products worth 140 billion yuan (around 17.5 billion US dollars) were sold in China during 2005, accounting for 26 percent of the total sales in the software industry, state media said Sunday.
Among the pirated software products, 47 percent were system software, 43 percent applications and 10 percent support software, said a report stemming from a nationwide investigation on pirated software products.
Xinhua news agency said the report attributed the high proportion of pirated software to poor after-sale service offered by software developers and lack of free or low-priced software for teaching.
The report suggested that the government should provide better after-sale service, increase the supply of free or low-priced software for schools and improve software quality and structure.
China has made great efforts to combat pirated software and encourage the use of legitimate ones, said Wang Ziqiang, spokesman for the State Copyright Bureau.
The Chinese central government is expected to allocate up to 150 million yuan (about 18.7 million dollars) for legitimate software purchases for government computers, he said.
Xinhua said China was also working to promote legitimate software use in enterprises, especially in the state-owned firms where the government has bigger control.
'China wants to give overseas companies confidence that piracy can be confined to a limited scale with consistent government efforts on striking pirated products,' Wang said.
Your Talkback on this Story